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> Moving heavy things by ship is remarkably cost-efficient This assumes you have sending a huge tanker full of fuel. When you have a smaller ship to send a ha
by lmilcin 6y ago
> Moving heavy things by ship is remarkably cost-efficient
This assumes you have sending a huge tanker full of fuel.
When you have a smaller ship to send a handful of barrels of fuel I guess the calculation changes. If not, everybody would be sending fuel in small ships in barrels.
- rtkwe 6y agoThe ship carries all the supplies not just the fuel and since the fuel needs to be transported across land on a tracked vehicle it's easier to do that in barrels than to have a specialty sled made and maintain a tank on the slowly shifting glacier.
- sandworm101 6y agoAnother nuance is likely environmental. They probably could transport the fuel in a big tank and then offload it to smaller containers, but that is a bulk fueling procedure that could go wrong/leak/spill. It is environmentally safer to transport fuel in closed containers all the way to the final destination.
- rtkwe 6y agoThere's tons of reasons traditional tanked shipping makes little sense. Volume, they're going to get quite a bit of fuel but it's still a tiny amount compared to the volume of a tanker. They're also sending down a lot of non liquid cargo, so being able to send it all on one ship makes sense.
- sandworm101 6y agoA bulk container would be more space-efficient, but on a ship it is the mass that counts against fuel efficiency rather than bulk. The price differences would only be significant when it comes to loading/unloading which, in Antarctica, are a very special case.
- akiselev 6y agoThe price difference comes from operational overhead on a tiny delivery (of which loading/unloading is a part), not from fuel inefficiency.